Jennifer Jason Leigh loves to smoke. But she doesn't smoke. But she's smoking. "I'm about to play a chain-smoker," the actress explains, nestled in a sofa in a Park Avenue hotel room. "So why stop and begin again?" Why indeed? Why even ask? When you take into consideration that Leigh, 32, one of the most convincing and certainly the most chameleonic of film actresses, is so umbilically linked to the characters she plays, one should assume the smoke signals an upcoming role. Or two.

When she was a little girl growing up in Los Angeles, Jennifer Jason Leigh liked to stay up way past her bedtime whenever her parents entertained their Hollywood pals. She'd finally fall asleep and be carried off to bed. Thirty years later, Leigh revisits that world, this time from a very adult perspective, in "The Anniversary Party."

December 3, 1995 | David Kronke, David Kronke is a regular contributor to Calendar. and

As the mother-daughter creative force behind "Georgia," screenwriter Barbara Turner and Jennifer Jason Leigh have a unique relationship: Their professional partnership moves the fact that they're so closely related to a distant back burner. "It's weird, I'm kind of able to separate," Turner says during dinner at the Chateau Marmont. "The turning point for me was 'Last Exit to Brooklyn.' She sort of stopped being my daughter then, onscreen.

Robert Altman calls his 1996 film a "jazz memory," and no one could hope to improve upon his description of his rich evocation of his hometown in 1934, the year he turned 9. Altman spins a tale of a cockamamie kidnapping. With Jennifer Jason Leigh, as a kidnaper over her head, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte (pictured) and Dermot Mulroney (Showtime early Wednesday at 5:20 a.m.).

Throughout the 14-week production of "Last Exit to Brooklyn," a raw and brutal examination of a violent, hopeless and rotting waterfront community in the 1950s, Jennifer Jason Leigh never dared to look in the mirror. If she had seen herself dressed up and walking and talking like Tralala, the pitiable, foul-mouthed prostitute she portrays in the film, she might not have been able to maintain the illusion. "I had to keep Tralala's reality alive, which is that she has this great life.

It's not as if Jennifer Jason Leigh isn't a known quantity, not like the kind of intense, edgy, nervous work she specializes in has not been seen and appreciated up to now. But, even with all that as a backdrop, what she accomplishes in "Georgia" tears you apart. Unlike performers desperate to try something out of their range, Leigh takes a more difficult, more rewarding route.

Robert Altman calls his 1996 film a "jazz memory," and no one could hope to improve upon his description of his rich evocation of his hometown in 1934, the year he turned 9. Altman spins a tale of a cockamamie kidnapping. With Jennifer Jason Leigh, as a kidnaper over her head, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte (pictured) and Dermot Mulroney (Showtime early Wednesday at 5:20 a.m.).

Those pristine perfectionists, the Coen brothers, do it again with a technically dazzling tribute to the films of the '40s that is more than a little cold around the heart. However, Tim Robbins (pictured) is terrific as a country boy who inadvertently gets caught up in a scheme to destroy a major corporation (and who invents the Hula-Hoop in the process).

It's supposed to be a secret, but Christopher Guest is currently directing his script of "The Big Picture" for Columbia, a dark comic yarn about a young film maker's introduction to Hollywood. Kevin Bacon plays the lead in the Michael Tarhol production, which also features Jennifer Jason Leigh, Martin Short and Elliott Gould. . . . Yes, Sean Penn will be trekking through Far East jungles with Michael J. Fox in Columbia's "Casualties of War," which goes before the cameras next month.

Backdraft (Imagine). Shooting in Chicago. "Parenthood's" Ron Howard directs another top-heavy cast as Robert DeNiro, Kurt Russell, Billy Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Scott Glenn, Rebecca DeMornay and Jason Gedrick all shine in this thriller set against an arson investigation in the Second City. Russell and Baldwin play brothers as the scenario is revealed through the point of view of a rookie firefighter. Executive producer Brian Grazer. Producers Richard B. Lewis, Pen Densham and John Watson.

What's happening this summer: * "The Peony Pavilion" ran into problems with Shanghai censors, but the three-week Lincoln Center Festival of cutting-edge arts events goes on through July 26 with a new production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" by the Tony Award-winning team of Nicholas Hytner and Bob Crowley ("Carousel"), early music group Sequentia's production of Hildegard von Bingen's "Ordo Virtutum" (arguably the world's first opera) and the Hamburg Ballet's "Bernstein Dances" with costumes

It's not as if Jennifer Jason Leigh isn't a known quantity, not like the kind of intense, edgy, nervous work she specializes in has not been seen and appreciated up to now. But, even with all that as a backdrop, what she accomplishes in "Georgia" tears you apart. Unlike performers desperate to try something out of their range, Leigh takes a more difficult, more rewarding route.

December 3, 1995 | David Kronke, David Kronke is a regular contributor to Calendar. and

As the mother-daughter creative force behind "Georgia," screenwriter Barbara Turner and Jennifer Jason Leigh have a unique relationship: Their professional partnership moves the fact that they're so closely related to a distant back burner. "It's weird, I'm kind of able to separate," Turner says during dinner at the Chateau Marmont. "The turning point for me was 'Last Exit to Brooklyn.' She sort of stopped being my daughter then, onscreen.

Those pristine perfectionists, the Coen brothers, do it again with a technically dazzling tribute to the films of the '40s that is more than a little cold around the heart. However, Tim Robbins (pictured) is terrific as a country boy who inadvertently gets caught up in a scheme to destroy a major corporation (and who invents the Hula-Hoop in the process).

Many actors get slammed for bad accents or, in the case of Kevin Costner in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," not bothering to try one at all. But Jennifer Jason Leigh has been rapped for mastering an accent all too well. Leigh nailed Dorothy Parker's affected, clipped mid-Atlantic brogue so well in Fine Line's forthcoming "Mrs.

Jennifer Jason Leigh loves to smoke. But she doesn't smoke. But she's smoking. "I'm about to play a chain-smoker," the actress explains, nestled in a sofa in a Park Avenue hotel room. "So why stop and begin again?" Why indeed? Why even ask? When you take into consideration that Leigh, 32, one of the most convincing and certainly the most chameleonic of film actresses, is so umbilically linked to the characters she plays, one should assume the smoke signals an upcoming role. Or two.

What's happening this summer: * "The Peony Pavilion" ran into problems with Shanghai censors, but the three-week Lincoln Center Festival of cutting-edge arts events goes on through July 26 with a new production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" by the Tony Award-winning team of Nicholas Hytner and Bob Crowley ("Carousel"), early music group Sequentia's production of Hildegard von Bingen's "Ordo Virtutum" (arguably the world's first opera) and the Hamburg Ballet's "Bernstein Dances" with costumes